Super Bowl 2014: Seahawks made it look like Broncos’ first rodeo (Izenberg)

Star-Ledger Columnist Emeritus Jerry Izenberg is one of three newspaper columnists who have covered every Super Bowl.

No disrespect to your grandmother, but you can forget everything she ever told you about the turtle and the hare.

Speed kills.

It always has and it always will.

That was the first message the Denver Broncos learned from Super Bowl XLVIII.

And while you are at it, be aware that Jack never killed any giants at his size — not the way he hit as measured against what he was trying to hit. You can’t try to stone a monster to death with a barrage of marshmallows.

That was the second message the Denver Broncos learned from Super Bowl XLVIII.

There were about 10 more after those. When you catch the ball, don’t lose it — at least not after you’ve run a half dozen yards with it. Don’t leave your quarterback naked to an oncoming blitz. Don’t snap the ball when your quarterback is running toward the line of scrimmage to change the play and leave it loose in the end zone.

And that just scratches the surface.

So what can you say about this Denver team that scored more points in the regular season than any other team in the history of the National Football League?

For openers, they came, they saw, they fell flat on their collective behinds.

It took just 12 seconds from opening kickoff to nightmare for the Broncos and another 12 seconds at the start of the second half to change the Broncos’ psyche from hope to despair. In the span of two plays covering 96 seconds less than it takes to boil a two-minute egg, the Broncos were cooked.

The first was the safety Seattle nailed when Peyton Manning was trying to change a play and the center Manny Ramirez, for reasons unknown, snapped the ball over his head and into the end zone. Coaches like to call this a miscommunication. That is not unlike a scout with an arrow in his chest telling Custer, "I think I saw an Indian."

As for the second 12-second burst. It was even more improbable than the first. Denver kicked off and in less time than it takes to write this, Percy Harvin ran it back 87 yards. He took it through at least five players, beaten so badly you almost had to expect them to face the Seahawks bench and shrug.

For the record earlier in the week. Pete Carroll, the coach, had told Percy:

"If your back foot is only one inch from the end line, you go for it."

Events proved that advice made him a Nostradamus among coaches.

There is yet another factor that nobody saw coming. The prevailing wisdom before this technical knockout was that to win, the Broncos defense needed to keep Russell Wilson, the Seahawks quarterback, from escaping the pocket and beating Denver with his legs.

He did not beat Denver with his legs.

He didn’t have to beat Denver with his legs.

Denver did a pretty good job of aiding and abetting in its own demise.

But all of that said, let us consider how good Seattle was.

Start with the Seahawks coaching staff. As a cheerleader all season, Carroll was terrific. As a coach, he was even better. His defensive coordinator, Dan Quinn, had the perfect plan to counteract all that Manning can do to you.

He sent blitzers. His line stunted and Seattle’s defensive backs — the best as a group in the league — played exactly like, well, the Seattle Seahawks secondary. In short, Manning’s history and Denver’s offense held no mystery to this team.

Carroll urged them to be physical. And they were. Twice Cliff Avril, a Seattle defensive end, tipped Manning’s passes and spent much of the game just an inch or two away from his face mask. Harassed and constantly challenged, Manning tried
to change the tempo with short
quick passes and all that achieved was changing the tempo to fewer yards than you needed for a first down.

And to think that for roughly 10 days, weather forecasters east of the Mississippi and north of the Gulf of Mexico were promising 20 inches of "partially cloudy" to turn the Super Bowl into a symphony of ice and snow.

They were, of course, wrong, but even more wrong was the anticipation that this would be the closest, most evenly contested Super Bowl in years.